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rateful for fully-funded ap-peals and gushing media coverage, hundreds of inter-national agencies have descended on tsunami-affected countries.1 This isdespite the fact that in the main the region has functioning governments, military forces and emergency services, active Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, extensive faith networks and countless local NGOs and community groups.
It is part of the standard rhetoric of international aid agencies that they have long-standing local partners. It is an indictment of past practice and lack of trust that so few felt able simply to send their partners some of the cash that flowed so speedily into their coffers. When expatriate staff flew in, they found indigenous organisations, temples, churches, mosques, local businesses and dias-pora-funded do-gooders getting to work almost everywhere.
From Sudan to Sri Lanka, interna-tional aid appears caught in a time warp, unable to notice the funda-mental changes underway in the skills, capacities and aspirations of the rapidly expanding number of local and regional NGOs. The latter are eager to play their full role in disasters, development and advocacy and are only held back by a lack of sustained funding and resultant difficulties in retaining trained staff due to higher salaries on offer else-where. Even in Africa, where once
international agencies might have argued that there was a dearth of in-digenous NGOs, civil society is grow-ing fast and takgrow-ing on tasks ranggrow-ing from AIDS awareness to agricultural extension advice. African NGOs now have experience in running refu-gee camps, providing psychosocial counselling, administering feeding programmes and much more.
AfricanNGOsymposium
While the inter-governmental initia-tive on good humanitarian donor-ship launched in Stockholm in 2003 seems to be making limited prog-ress2, representatives of hundreds of
African NGOs gathered in December 2004 in Addis Ababa to discuss their future. They came at the invitation of the African Union and one of the continent’s leading indigenous relief agencies, Africa Humanitarian Action (AHA). Founded in the wake of the Rwanda genocide by Dr Dawit Zawde, a former President of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society, AHA now has offices, trustees and sup-porters across the continent.
In a positive sign that some donors and major agencies are listening to the concerns of grassroots organisations, the Addis Ababa symposium was supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Swedish In-ternational Development Agency, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and UNHCR.
The meeting agreed to establish a Centre for Humanitarian Action as an African-led think tank, research centre and information exchange on issues around humanitarian and natural disasters. It intends to facili-tate communication between African humanitarian agencies and their international counterparts, advise African NGOs on how to mobilise new and additional resources, and work to enhance good governance and management within Africa’s humanitarian sector.
Many delegates expressed a deep sense of frustration at the foot-dragging reluctance of the North to allow African NGOs the resources to get on with the job to which they are committed. The final resolution urged donors to channel at least 25% of humanitarian aid through local NGOs, with a minimum of 10% of grants for overheads rather than the unsustainable 5% often on offer from UNHCR and other funders.
The proliferation of international aid agencies and the emergence of new donors – with sets of complex reporting requirements to add to the existing burden of recipient NGOs – is denying emerging civil society the space, funding and staff to thrive and grow. Chances of delivering local, appropriate, immediate and cost-effective assistance for dis-placed people are being lost. There is an almost predatory link between the South’s calamities and Northern agencies’ need for a ‘good disaster’ to grab media attention and fund-ing for their salaries, perks, plane tickets, hotels, four-wheel drives, satphones and interpreters.
It is clearly in everyone’s interest to have a fully-funded, well functioning
Whoshoulddrivehuman-itarianresponses
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Fromrefugeeflowstoearthquakerelief,itisinvariably
localgroupswhichareonthehumanitarianfrontline.
Shouldinternationalagenciesreinventthemselvesas
solidarityandadvocacynetworksandstartletting
SouthernNGOstakethelead
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and sustainable local frontline for humanitarian action. Local NGOs must be allowed to take over the driving seat of aid. Some are already developing their own capacity to generate domestic and international funds via commercial enterprises, direct grants, payments for out-sourced state welfare services and cross-border Internet-based philan-thropy. Local agencies need signifi-cantly more funding, some of which can come by diverting it away from Northern aid agencies. The latter can then pursue a supportive fundraising and advocacy role for their frontline partners in the way that many faith-based networks are already doing.
Civil society in the South is demand-ing the opportunity to take on more responsibility. In the words of Dawit Zawde: “Today’s international aid system is skewed in favour of the Northern agenda and cannot respond adequately to the priorities of organisations in the South. Africa has long been depicted as a hope-less zone of conflict, famine and displacement that lacks capacity to respond adequately to crisis. This perception supports an aid paradigm that marginalises and erodes local capacity, casting African actors as sub-contractors to their international counterparts. Tackling the crises, conflicts and disasters in Africa
should be, first and foremost, the responsibility of Africans.”
Nick Cater is a consultant and com-mentator on humanitarian issues. Email: wordspicturesuk@yahoo. co.uk. For information about Africa Humanitarian Action visit www.afri-cahumanitarian.org or contact: AHA, PO Box 110, Code 1250, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Tel: + 251 1 511224. Email: aha@telecom.net.et
1. This theme will be explored at greater length in the forthcoming special FMR supplement on the tsunami response, due out July.
2. www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/eco-soc6072.doc.htm
Humanresourcesneglected
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ince 2002 more than three million refugees have returned home to Afghanistan, mostly from Pakistan and Iran, in UNHCR’s largest assisted repatriation exercise. Unfortunately, some 75% of them have returned having never received any formal schooling, either prior to becoming refugees or in exile. For all the years of their displacement the international community knew that sooner or later repatriation and reconstruction would ensue. How could UNESCO, UNICEF, ILO and other organisations with education as part of their mandates allow this to happen? Why did they not sound the alarm when UNHCR reported these shortcomings? NGOs and the Pakistani authorities must also bear some responsibility. Why were Pak-istan’s professional, academic and scientific institutions not involved in educating Afghans?Afghanistan’s reconstruction is being delayed by lack of trained person-nel. They would have been available had we – the ‘experts’ and ‘advisers’ – done our jobs properly. Instead, we effectively ignored literacy training, vocational and technical training, teacher training and capacity build-ing. We have done little to involve Pakistani and Afghan scholars or institutions and have neither recognised the abilities, nor done
much to build the capacity, of local organisations. ACBAR, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, with offices in Peshawar and Kabul, has done excellent work in involving Afghans. However, there are very few examples of institutional develop-ment programmes and long-term inter-university and other institu-tional linkages between NGOs and in-stitutions, and Pakistani and Afghan institutions.
There is scope for the situation to improve. With donor funding and NGO support, Pakistani and Afghan professionals and government of-ficials could together draw up plans for rapid action. Much training can be done in countries bordering Afghanistan rather than in more distant and costly locations. Afghani-stan cannot afford the time it would take to wait until its institutions are fully equipped to undertake the necessary training.
Southern Sudan is facing the same problem. In the late 1990s, I coor-dinated the Turkana Development Forum. The forum brought together ‘experts’, politicians, donors, NGOs and refugees in order to provide educational assistance – especially secondary and technical education, peace education and reconstruction planning – for the Turkanas in
Kenya, the Karamajong in Uganda and the southern Sudanese. But al-though the donors expressed agree-ment with the Forum’s aims and took many chartered flights from Nairobi to the Sudanese border to ‘assess the situation’, no funding was allocated. Now, when peace finally seems to have come to southern Sudan, the consequence could be more than just delayed development: the whole fragile reconstruction and peace process may be in jeopardy. Had there been greater involvement of the professional institutions in the host country this would not have happened.
Donors must learn to take a back seat, to allow the involvement of local professional institutions and to heed their advice. We need to learn from the past and identify mistakes and their consequences. As donors step back from setting priorities they can put on centre stage those who should already be there: local institu-tions, governments and the refugees and returnees themselves.
Atle Hetland is a development and refugee education specialist who has worked in East Africa, Aghani-stan and PakiAghani-stan.
Email: atlehetland@yahoo.com
